Kristen Stewart will make her TV series debut as astronaut Sally Ride in The Challenger.
The actress, 34, who lashed out against Hollywood for what she called its ‘phony’ support of women directors, will take on the role of Ride, the first American woman to travel to space, per Deadline.
Ride, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2012, joined NASA in 1978 as part of a diverse class of astronauts, including the first Black and Asian-American astronauts and a married couple.
The Los Angeles native conducted her space shuttle first mission in 1983 aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
Three years later, Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff on a cold morning at Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 28, 1986.
Kristen Stewart will make her TV series debut as astronaut Sally Ride in The Challenger(Pictured in New York in March)
Ride became the first American woman to travel to space in 1983
Read More
Kristen Stewart admits she'll 'likely never do a Marvel movie' unless this director asked her
The diverse crew included Ride’s classmates Ronald McNair, Judith Resnik and Ellison Onizuka, along with Michael J. Smith, Gregory Jarvis, Francis R. ‘Dick’ Scobee and school teacher Christa McAuliffe.
Ride was the only astronaut to take part in the Rogers Commission.
The plot of the series not only looks at the groundbreaking class of 1978, but the investigation into the 1986 Challenger tragedy as well.
The show is based on the book The New Guys, by Meredith E Bagby.
Bagby, along with with Kyra Sedgwick and Valerie Stadler created their company, Big Swing Productions in order to create the series.
In an interview with Deadline, Sedgewick said the project was one she had been working on for years.
‘This is something we’ve worked on at Big Swing since 2017, me, Meredith and Valerie, about this new class of astronaut recruited by NASA in the early 1970s,’ she told the outlet.
Part of the series will focus on the 1986 Challenger disaster which claimed the lives of school teacher Christa McAuliffe and astronauts Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Francis R. ‘Dick’ Scobee Ronald McNair, Michael J. Smith and Ellison Onizuka
‘Sally Ride was among them, and the focus is this newly recruited wild, feral group of astronauts who were all very diverse, the Emmy winner explained.
‘And then on an Oppenheimer track, it also tells the story of the Rogers Commission that investigated the Challenger disaster that Ride took part in.’
Bagby who was obsessed with space and the shuttle program during her childhood in Florida saw the Challenger explode on that fateful day.
‘Meredith got hundreds of hours of interviews with the members of that class, and we have relationships with all those living astronauts and they will be part of our brain trust on the show,’ she said.
The Closer star disclosed that it was Stadler’s ‘dream of having Kristen Stewart,’ in the role of Ride.
‘After more than a year of trying to get Kristen this book through back channeling, she read it and she fell in love,’ Sedgwick said.
Kyra Sedgwick developed the series for years with The New Guys author Meredith E Bagby and writer and producer Valerie Stadler through their Big Swing production company (Pictured in New York in May)
Stewart, who has been open about her sexuality since coming out publicly as a lesbian when she hosted Saturday Night Live in 2017, may have to put in a closeted performance.
Ride was also gay, making her the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to travel to space, but her sexuality was never publicly acknowledged until after her death.
The obituary written Ride and her longtime companion Tam O’Shaughnessy and release by Sally Ride Science referred to O’Shaughnessy as Ride’s ‘partner of 27 years.’
Sedgwick, who is producing the series with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners and with Stewart’s Nevermind production label, hopes to have the show ready in time to mark the 50th anniversary of the Challenger tragedy.